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Technology

Feedly a worthy successor to Google Reader

??A typical Google Reader page offers a lot of information but in a highly congested, unattractive format. The serivce ends on July 1. ??This Feedly.com layout called Cards shows how that aggregator service is much more visually appealing.

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Well, if we didn’t get it before, we get it now: Google giveth, and Google taketh away.

On July 1, it will take away Google Reader. To the dismay of millions, that service will go the
way of Google Answers, Google Buzz, iGoogle and GOOG-411. Google hasn’t provided much in the way of
a satisfying reason for this “spring cleaning,” saying only, “Usage has declined.”

This column is intended to help two kinds of people: those who used Google Reader, and those who
never even knew what it was.

It’s like an online newspaper you assemble yourself from Web pages all over the world. Instead
of sitting down at your desk each morning and visiting each of your favorite sites in turn — say,
nytimes.com, Reddit.com and HuffingtonPost.com — you just open reader.google.com. There, you find a
tidy list of all the new articles from all of those sources, organized like an email inbox. You
skim the headlines, you read summaries, you click the ones that seem worth reading.

There was a huge outcry when Google announced the imminent death of Reader — petitions, blogs,
the works — but you might not immediately understand why. Google Reader is notoriously ugly. It’s
fairly complicated and busy.

It is, however, complete, customizable and convenient. And once you’ve set up your preferred
sources of reading material, they show up identically on every computer, tablet and phone. The
masses may not have used Reader or even heard of it, but information devotees, newshounds and tech
followers loved it.

They needn’t mourn. Google Reader has plenty of rivals and satisfying replacements.

Newsreaders are available for every kind of phone, tablet and computer: Bloglines, NewsBlur,
Pulse, Taptu, Reeder, FeedDemon, Spundge, Good Noows, HiveMined, Prismatic, Netvibes, NetNewsWire,
ManagingNews and so on. Some are Web pages like Google Reader; others are stand-alone programs or
apps. Some email programs can subscribe to these feeds, too, dropping them right into your
inbox.

The one everybody keeps saying is the natural heir to Google Reader, though, is Feedly.com. In
fact, Feedly says the ranks of its 4 million users have swelled to 7 million since Google’s Reader
death sentence was announced.

It requires a free plug-in for the Firefox, Chrome and Safari browsers. Three factors in
particular make it useful.

First: Simply logging into Feedly with your Google name and password instantly re-creates your
Google Reader setup. All of your news sources, favorites and tags — category names that you can
apply to certain articles, for ease in rounding them up later — magically show up in Feedly, ready
to use. The synchronization is two-way; until July 1, you can bounce between Reader and Feedly to
your heart’s content, and your newsreader worlds will look identical.

(Feedly relies on Google Reader’s feeds. But the company says it will seamlessly replace Google’s
feeds with its own source by July 1.)

Second, Feedly is much nicer-looking than Google Reader. It does a better job with typography —
Google does no job at all — the layout is more attractive and it offers more views of your
news.

Third, Feedly offers fantastic ways to subscribe to stuff.

Way 1: As you surf along, whenever you find a website that looks good, you click the small,
transparent Feedly button that appears in the lower-right corner of your Web browser — at least if
you use Chrome or Firefox. Feedly says it’s working on bringing its button to Safari.

Way 2: When you’re on Feedly’s page, click the magnifying-glass icon to view a curated table of
contents — a list of subscribe-worthy sites in categories such as Tech, Business, News, Cooking,
YouTube, Etsy and so on.

Ways 3, 4, 5: Click that same icon and type, into the box at the top, a Web address, a website’s
name or even a topic. Choose from the results Feedly presents.

Finally — and here’s the big one — Feedly doesn’t work in Internet Explorer, which locks out a
lot of potential customers. And in the browsers that do work, you have to install a tiny “
bookmarklet” (a plug-in), which is against the rules at some corporations and public computers.

Feedly is feverishly working to address these limitations; it takes the mantle of Reader
Successor seriously. Indeed, some of the best features have been added recently, in an effort to
accommodate Reader refugees. (Feedly’s tips for an effortless transition:
http://j.mp/10mkEb7.)

In the meantime, Feedly is an easy-to-use service for two categories of people: those who once
used Google Reader and those who’ve never heard of it. If you’re still starting your morning with a
zigzag through a standard set of websites, you’re wasting time and energy. Feedly is what you
needly.